Andreas Delfs conducted several recording sessions with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra during his 12-year tenure as music director. Although he was sometimes criticized for cautious programming, his final CD with the MSO ventured into the less familiar symphonic world of contemporary music.
Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra infuses the Caribbean rhythms of his island home into the classical symmetry. He also has a long-standing tie with the MSO, which performed the world premiere of his Jubilo at Carnegie Hall in 1987. Growing up before Vatican II opened the Roman Catholic Church and gutted its music, Sierra was profoundly moved by the mystery of the old Latin mass. Like composers from Mozart through Bernstein, the form of the mass provided him with a framework for inspiration.
Sierra's Missa Latina Pro Pace, recorded by the MSO and Chorus under Delfs (and released on the Naxos imprint), is a richly threaded tapestry balancing the solemn hues of the Tridentine rite with the colorful rhythms of Puerto Rico. It honors both traditions. Of necessity, the Symphony Chorus is given pride of place as the choir enveloping soprano Heidi Grant Murphy and baritone Nathaniel Webster in the star singers' operatic interpretations of the text.
